"But he was supposed to be in the elevator, and we--"
"Scram," Sand said. It sounded like a curse. The two men got out.
"Like apes in the trees," Sand said heavily. "Ask for bright boys and
what do you get? Everything," he went on dismally, "is going to hell."
* * * * *
That line, Malone reflected, was beginning to have all the persistence
of a bass-bourdon. It droned its melancholy way through anything and
everything else. He signed deeply, thought about a cigar and lit a
cigarette instead. It tasted awful. "About those buttons--" he said.
"I got nothing to do with buttons," Sand said.
"You do with these," Malone said. "A shipment of buttons from the
Nevada desert. You grabbed them from Palveri."
"I got nothing to do with it," Sand said.
Malone looked around and found a chair and an ashtray. He grabbed one
and sat down in the other. "I'm not from Castelnuovo," he said. "Or
Palveri, or any of the Mafia boys. If I were, you'd know it fast
enough."
Sand regarded him from under eyelids made almost entirely of
scar-tissue. "I guess so," he said sourly at last. "But what do you
want to know about the stuff? And who are you, anyhow?"
"The name's Malone," Malone said. "You might say trouble is my
business. Or something like that. I see an opportunity to create a
little trouble--but not for you. That is, if you want to hear some
more about those buttons. Of course, if you had nothing to do with
it--"
"All right," Sand said. "All right. But it was strictly a legitimate
proposition, understand?"
"Sure," Malone said. "Strictly legitimate."
"Well, it was," Sand said defensively. "We got to stop scab trucking,
don't we? And that Palveri was using nonunion boys on the trucks. We
had to stop them; it was a service to the Brotherhood, understand?"
"And the peyotl buttons?" Malone asked.
Sand shrugged. "So we had to confiscate the cargo, didn't we?" he
said. "To teach them a lesson. Nonunion drivers, that's what we're
against."
"And you're for peyotl," Malone said, "so you can make it into peyote
and get enough money to refurbish Brotherhood Headquarters."
"Now, look," Sand said. "You think you're tough and you can get away
with a lot of wisecracks. That's a wrong idea, brother." He didn't
move, but he suddenly seemed set to spring. Malone wondered if, just
maybe, his precognition had blown a fuse.
"O.K., let's forget it," he said. "But I've got some inside lines,
Sand. You didn't get the real shipment."
"Didn't get it?" Sand said with raised eyebrows. "I got it. It's
right where I can put my finger on it now."
"That was the fake," Malone said easily. "They knew you were after a
shipment, Sand, so they suckered you in. They fed your spies with
false information and sent you out after the fake shipment."
"Fake shipment?" Sand said. "It's the real stuff, brother. The real
stuff."
"But not enough of it," Malone said. "Their big shipments are almost
three times what you got. They made one while you were suckered off
with the fake--and they're making another one next week. Interested?"
Sand snorted. "The hell," he said. "Didn't you hear me say I got the
first shipment right where I can put my finger on it?"
"So?" Malone said.
"So I can't get rid of it," Sand said. "What do I want with a new
load? Every day I hold the stuff is dangerous. You never know when
somebody's going to look for it and maybe find it."
"Can't get rid of it?" Malone said. This was a new turn of events.
"What's happening?"
"Everything," Sand said tersely. "Look, you want to sell me some
information--but you don't know the setup. Maybe when I tell you,
you'll stop bothering me." He put his head in his hands, and his
voice, when he spoke again, was muffled. "The contacts are gone," he
said. "With the arrests and the resignations and everything else,
nobody wants to take any chances; the few guys that aren't locked up
are scared they will be. I can't make any kind of a deal for anything.
There just isn't any action."
"Things are tough, huh?" Malone said hopelessly. Apparently even Mike
Sand wasn't going to pan out for him.
"Things are terrible," Sand said. "The locals are having
revolutions--guys there are kicking out the men from National
Headquarters. Nobody knows where he stands any more--a lot of my
organizers have been goofing up and getting arrested for one thing and
another. Like apes in the trees, that's what."
Malone nodded very slowly and took another puff of the cigarette.
"Nothing's going right," he said.
"Listen," Sand said. "You want to hear trouble? My account books are
in duplicate--you know? Just to keep things nice and peaceful and
quiet."
"One for the investigators and one for the money," Malone said.
"Sure," Sand said, preoccupied with trouble. "You know the setup. But
both sets are missing. Both sets." He raised his head, the picture of
witless agony. "I've got an idea where they are, too. I'm just waiting
for the axe to fall."
"O.K.," Malone said. "Where are they?"
"The U. S. Attorney's Office," Sand said dismally. He stared down at
his battered desk and sighed.
Malone stubbed out his cigarette. "So you're not in the market for any
more buttons?" he said.
"All I'm in the market for," Sand said without raising his eyes, "is
a nice, painless way to commit suicide."
* * * * *
Malone walked several blocks without noticing where he was going. He
tried to think things over, and everything seemed to fall into a
pattern that remained, agonizingly, just an inch or so out of his
mental reach. The mental bursts, the trouble the United States was
having, Palveri, Queen Elizabeth, Burris, Mike Sand, Dr. O'Connor, Sir
Lewis Carter and even Luba Ardanko juggled and flowed in his mind like
pieces out of a kaleidoscope. But they refused to form any pattern he
could recognize.
He uttered a short curse and managed to collide with a bulky woman
with frazzled black hair. "Pardon me," he said politely.
"The hell with it," the woman said, looking straight past him, and
went jerkily on her way. Malone blinked and looked around him. There
were a lot of people still on the streets, but they didn't look like
normal New York City people. They were all curiously tense and wary,
as if they were suspicious not only of him and each other, but even
themselves. He caught sight of several illegal-looking bulges beneath
men's armpits, and many heavily sagging pockets. One or two women
appeared to be unduly solicitous of their large and heavy handbags.
But it wasn't his job to enforce the Sullivan Law, he told himself.
Especially while he was on vacation.
A single foot patrolman stood a few feet ahead, guarding a liquor
store with drawn revolver, his eyes scanning the passers-by warily
while he waited for help. Behind him, the smashed plate glass and
broken bottles and the sprawled figure just inside the door told a
fairly complete story.
Down the block, Malone saw several stores that carried _Closed_ or
_Gone Out Of Business_ signs. The whole depressing picture gave him
the feeling that all the tragedies of the 1930-1935 period had somehow
been condensed into the past two weeks.
Ahead there was a chain drugstore, and Malone headed for it. Two
uniformed men wearing Special Police badges were standing near the
door eyeing everyone with suspicion, but Malone managed to get past
them and went on to a telephone booth. He tried dialling the
Washington number of the FBI, but got only a continuous _beep-beep_,
indicating a service delay. Finally he managed to get a special
operator, who told him sorrowfully that calls to Washington were
jamming all available trunk lines.
Malone glanced around to make sure nobody was watching. Then he
teleported himself to his apartment in Washington and, on arriving,
headed for the phone there. Using that one, he dialed again, got
Pelham's sad face on the screen, and asked for Thomas Boyd.
Boyd didn't look any different, Malone thought, though maybe he was a
little more tired. Henry VIII had obviously had a hard day trying to
get his wives to stop nagging him. "Ken," he said. "I thought you were
on vacation. What are you doing calling up the FBI, or do you just
want to feel superior to us poor working slobs?"
"I need some information," Malone said.
Boyd uttered a short, mirthless laugh. "How to beat the tables, you
mean?" he said. "How are things in good old Las Vegas?"
Malone, realizing that with direct-dial phones Boyd had no idea where
he was actually calling from, kept wisely quiet. "How about Burris?"
he said after a second. "Has he come up with any new theories yet?"
"New theories?" Boyd said. "What about?"
"Everything," Malone said. "From all I see in the papers things
haven't been quieting down any. Is it still Brubitsch, Borbitsch and
Garbitsch putting psychodrugs in water-coolers, or has something new
been added?"
"I don't know what the chief thinks," Boyd said. "Things'll straighten
out in a while. We're working on it--twenty-four hours a day, or damn
near, but we're working. While you take a nice, long vacation that--"
"I want you to get me something," Malone said. "Just go and get it and
send it to me at Las Vegas."
"Money?" Boyd said with raised eyebrows.
"Dossiers," Malone said. "On Mike Sand and Primo Palveri."
"Palveri I can understand," Boyd said. "You want to threaten him with
exposure unless he lets you beat the roulette tables. But why Sand?
Ken, are you working on something psionic?"
"Me?" Malone said sweetly. "I'm on vacation."
"The chief won't like--"
"Can you send me the dossiers?" Malone interrupted.
Boyd shook his head very slowly. "Ken, I can't do it without the chief
finding out about it. If you are working on something ... hell, I'd
like to help you. But I don't see how I can. You don't know what
things are like here."
"What are they like?" Malone said.
"The full force is here," Boyd said. "As far as I know, you're the
only vacation leave not canceled yet. And not only that, but we've got
agents in from the Sureté and New Scotland Yard, agents from Belgium
and Germany and Holland and Japan ... Ken, we've even got three MVD
men here working with us."
"It's happening all over?" Malone said.
"All over the world," Boyd said. "Ken, I'm beginning to think we've
got a case of Martian Invaders on our hands. Or something like it." He
paused. "But we're licking them, Ken," he went on. "Slowly but surely,
we're licking them."
"How do you mean?" Malone said.
"Crime is down," Boyd said, "away down. Major crime, I mean--petty
theft, assault, breaking and entering and that sort of thing has gone
away up, but that's to be expected. Everything's going to--"
"Skip the handbasket," Malone said. "But you're working things out?"
"Sooner or later," Boyd said. "Every piece of equipment and every man
in the FBI is working overtime; we can't be stopped forever."
"I'll wave flags," Malone said bitterly. "And I wish I could join
you."
"Believe me," Boyd said, "you don't know when you're well off."
Malone switched off. He looked at his watch; it was ten-thirty.